When I Was You
by Cloud Moved On
Summary: Cloud is thinking about what he owes to Zack after the end of Advent Children.


When I Was You

I guess I always wanted to be something I wasn't. Or some_one_ I wasn't. At home in Nibelheim I wanted to be the kind of boy a girl like Tifa would notice. I wanted to be taller. I wanted to be Sephiroth.

"So what?" I can hear you say. "Everyone wanted to be Sephiroth and he didn't turn out so good." Then you'd laugh and punch my shoulder and make some joke to make me feel better. And it would work. That's what I miss.

When we met on that mission to Modeoheim I couldn't believe you were so down to earth. As the helicopter fell towards the mountainside I thought we were going to die but you were so calm. Tseng of the Turks was calm too and that made me feel like I had to be, so as not to let the ordinary troopers down. Because if I was ever going to make Soldier and be a First I would have to be better than an ordinary trooper and better than a Turk. I would have to be like you.

You were the first First Class I'd ever met. I mean I'd seen Sephiroth, Angeal and Genesis on the parade ground and giving speeches but I'd never spoken to them. So I tried not to show that I was shaken up by the crash and I walked fast to keep up with you. You looked as if you were going for a stroll. Everything was so easy for you. But I managed to keep level with you and we left Tseng and the others behind struggling through the snow. That's when you spoke to me and told me that you were from Gongaga and a country boy just like me. You weren't like I thought Firsts would be. I thought they'd be proud like Sephiroth or quiet and stern like Angeal or boastful like I'd heard Genesis could be. But you weren't like that. You were like me, only better. Like the me I wanted to be.

We met quite a few times after that and you always treated me as a friend. You got on with everyone and never took anything too seriously. Until we were sent to Nibelheim.

Going home for me was a shameful experience. I felt that I had to hide from Tifa. I couldn't bear to see her scorn or her disappointment. Or worse, her indifference. What if she wasn't surprised at all? What if she'd always expected me to fail? You didn't understand why I wouldn't talk to her. How could you understand when you were so sure of who you were? Even after everything that happened with Angeal and Genesis you still seemed to believe that things would work out somehow. You never seemed to doubt your own honour, even if you had started to sometimes question why your orders were the way they were. I questioned everything. That was the difference between us. When I was rejected from the Soldier programme they said the main problem wasn't my height, although that was a factor. It was something they found in my psychological test results. That I was too inclined to doubt which could lead to lack of commitment or paralysis when there was need for quick decision making on the battlefield.

I was so wrapped up in myself at the time that I never stopped to think about what you'd been through losing Lazard and Genesis and most of all Angeal. And yet you kept going. You didn't lose it like Sephiroth. You still knew what was right and what was wrong. It came down to 'protect your honour as Soldier and look after your friends' didn't it? I admired you so much and I never got a chance to tell you, or to thank you for saving my life.

After Nibelheim, after they put us in those tanks, I don't remember much. The world became a kind of green haze for years even after you got me out. I remember flashes. A motorbike. A fight with a monster that looked like Genesis. Hiding in a forest somewhere. Mostly I remember you talking to me. Always talking as if I could reply. You told me about your life in Gongaga and about your parents. About a girl you met in Midgar in a church. She had the brightest smile you'd ever seen, you said, and she liked to tease you and she grew flowers.

And then there was a truck in a dusty desert. You were talking about working in Midgar, being a mercenary. Then you were pulling me across rough ground, and then there was the sound of gunfire that melted into the sound of rain.

After that I was dragging the sword across the empty land towards Midgar and all I knew was that I was a Soldier First Class going to find work as a mercenary.

When I was you I thought I knew who I was. I thought I was untouchable, the perfect mercenary who would get the job done with no regrets. I thought I'd made it. But now I can see that I was nothing like you. I never laughed or felt anything strongly. I never connected with people. I was a puppet like Sephiroth said, only not a puppet of him, but a puppet of you. When Tifa helped me to unweave the tangled threads in the lifestream and separate out what was you and what was me I could see that all I had done was to take the parts of you I envied and tried to graft them onto myself. But they hadn't taken. How could they? I was only Cloud.

It took all of them to put me back together. All my friends and the memory of you and what you really stood for. It was only then that I could be myself and find the strength to defeat Sephiroth. I don't think I understood any of this until now, now that I have faced him again, alone. You were with me, but you knew that I didn't need you any more. It didn't matter that I'd never made Soldier. It didn't matter that I wasn't you. I was Cloud and I was strong enough.

I saw you, with Aerith, in the church. You were always hers. She was always yours. I was only your reflection, for her, falling out of the same sky, into the same patch of flowers, the mako almost as blue in my eyes as yours.

I saw you wave goodbye and I turned back to Tifa and Denzel and Marlene. My family and my life. I was never Sephiroth, and I was never you. But you saved me, and you showed me the way to be Cloud. I was only a shadow, and then I was in your shadow, and now I'm standing in the sun. I remember you always laughing. It's been a long road, but at last, you've shown me how to smile.


End file.
